New Nebraska Cornhuskers AD Troy Dannen is in the process of officially putting his own personal stamp on the athletic program. The biggest and most prominent way that Dannen will do that is by blazing his own path in the Nebraska football stadium project, making a hard left from what his predecessor had planned for the mothership.
Dannen announced the changes he has planned for Memorial Stadium this week, not long after he claimed he didn't foresee the plan would deviate much from what Trev Alberts laid out last fall. Of course, few people really believed he actually expected to do all the things Alberts planned, especially because some the changes were very, very unpopular among Nebraska football fans.
“The project remains on track,” Dannen told a group of reporters on Thursday. “However, the timing and the sequencing is going to be different than I think might have been projected earlier. Going forward, we’re going to really focus the architects on East and West Stadium. The rationale for that quite simply is East and West (Stadium) has the potential to monetize itself."
Nebraska football stadium changes allow Troy Dannen to blaze own path
Dannen also explained why there's been a shift in how his office is going to approach the Stadim project.
“The landscape of what’s going on right now, the ability to generate money, I’m going to have a pretty big spot on my budget for new money that needs to be generated. I think there was speculation that the south was coming down at the end of the ’24 season. That is not happening.”
He did add that the South stadium revamp could happen eventually, but it's slid way down the priority list.
While some people might have been happy to hear about the tearing down of South stadium this fall is on hold, Dannen did make sure there was something for people to get rather annoyed with.
Chair-back seating in the East and West stadiums are in the plan and will tie each seat to a licensing fee. The new premium East and West chair-backed seats would have access to several new in-stadium amenities. Though just what those amenities are wasn't announced.
That would also mean a stadium reseat would take place, and NU’s ticket grandfathering system, which went into effect over a decade ago, would end.
The final bit of big news about the stadium projet is that nothing will take place as far as giving Memorial Stadium a facelift until 2025. That gives a little more time for Nebraska footbal fans to prepare for the changes.